In This is Love
Love is the subject of songs, books, movies, and any other form of media one can think of. Yet, I can't help but consider that, even though we talk about it often, we are missing something. You see, many mix up the idea of love and romance. We often get close to true love, but much of it is selfish, merely saying "I love you for how you make me feel." True, honest love, however, is not based upon how I feel, but, rather, how I act. True Love is not emotional. It is not based on feelings, it is not based on attraction. True love is choosing to sacrifice one's wants, wishes, and desires for the benefit of others. God demonstrates His great love for us, in that, deserving nothing, He sent His son to live up to His standards and die the death of a rebel to set rebellious humanity free from burdens they laid upon themselves. Some will say "I didn't ask Him to." That is their right. In love, God gave people the choice to live their existence how they see fit. It is unfortunate that this great freedom God gave us is used to destroy ourselves and the environment around us. I'm not speaking ecologically (though we gave up God's word to unnatural disaster through Sin), but the world in rebellion which mass produces disease, war, disasters in nature and the like were not part of the original design of God's "very good" world. True Love is choosing. God, the designer and author of it all, chose us but gives us the right to reject Him. God gave us all, and gives us the right to choose self-destruction over His authority. God loves us that He gave us the right to utterly rejection, but died that We might be free from our own self-destructive habits. I want to love like Him. 1 John 4:7-21 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
